


when am i gonna start living?

by towokuwusatsuwu



Category: Sugarless
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Crushes, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, M/M, Miscommunication, Trans Male Character, i can't believe this fandom doesn't even exist on this website yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 12:56:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15315966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towokuwusatsuwu/pseuds/towokuwusatsuwu
Summary: when shiba gaku transfers to kujima high school and begins his battle for the top of the school, the title of the best and strongest fighter, he never expects to have himself hauled to the rooftop for a conversation with the man himself. shake has designs on something gaku can hardly wrap his mind around.





	when am i gonna start living?

The rooftop of Kujima High School looks different than it did even two months ago.

The chair near the center of the roof is usually occupied by the Top of the school, the undefeated Shake in all of his glory, the prince in the ivory tower that no one was quite worthy enough to touch. Today, though, just this once, Shiba Gaku has this seat; the thrill that curls through his body is impossible to ignore, his body fitting into the chair like it was made to sit there, his arms resting lightly on the armrests, his heart beating in his throat.

Not that he even realizes the gravity of the position. Gaku is well-known for only having the attention span for one small thing at a moment’s notice, a kind of tunnel vision no one else is privy to understanding, only witnessing from the outside. A puzzle whose pieces form no coherent picture to speak of. Anyone else would have been thrilled from the taboo of sitting in Shake’s chair, of taking his place for even the breath of a moment, but Gaku’s attention is fixed only on Shake himself, perched on the small table in front of the chair.

The two of them are sitting close enough that their knees touch, Shake’s cardigan sweater fanned out on the table behind him so the wind picks it up every so often, soft and white behind him. The only noise comes from nature; the birds tweeting, the breeze, and the flag attached to the windmill. Shake himself has been silent since he sent Udo to come find Gaku, half-dragging him out of class and ignoring his teacher in the process. To be honest, Gaku thought for sure one of them might have been written up for the stunt, but apparently not.

Pinned beneath Shake’s intense stare, Gaku has been silent. He knows how uncharacteristic this is of him, but something about being this close to Shake makes his voice want to die in his throat, his vocal cords refusing to function at their usual level. He wants to challenge this, shout something, say anything to prove he can speak in Shake’s presence and yet the longer those dark eyes pin him in place, the less he wants to speak. Something about the quiet around them is peaceful and pleasing to him, and Gaku has never been a fan of the quiet.

When he had been brought up to the roof, Shake sat him down in the chair, sat down across from him, and let the silence begin. Gaku squirms a little in place; how long has he been up here? With no clouds in the sky and the sun beating down on him, the heat should be unbearable but the breeze keeps it nice enough that he finds himself not minding so much. Which is good, because between his button-down and his binder, he would be sweating.

“I wondered if you’d fight being brought up here.” Shake finally speaks, the words so soft and quiet that Gaku almost has to strain to hear them despite how little distance stretches between them. “I told Udo to be prepared for that, just in case. You never go quietly anywhere.”

Gaku swallows at the words, wondering what to take away from them. “I, uh…”

Smooth. Real smooth.

Shake runs his hand over the lower half of his face, his eyes burning. “And yet, here you are.”

Something about the shift in his voice makes Gaku sit up and take notice, his back coming away from the chair, hands gripping the armrests tightly enough that he can feel his hands trembling from the strain. “Yeah,” he says, voice slow and a little hesitant. “Here I am.”

He thinks, distantly, that if Kirio was here, he would be making fun of them for sitting so quietly, so dramatically, and speaking in such hushed tones when there is no one around to hear them. And even though Gaku wants to be loud— it’s in his  _ nature, _ the core of his being— something feels almost tangible between them and around them, and he thinks he might break it in the process if he isn’t careful, doesn’t tread lightly.

Gaku is never cautious. He runs into everything headfirst and gives it his all because doing anything less would be a torturous way to live. How often did he have to be careful around his family, around his friends? No more of that. Gaku can only be himself, no limits and no filters, nothing but who he is inside and out. And yet, Shake has him hesitating.

He should hate him for that, he thinks. And yet, he doesn’t think he can.

“It’s strange having you up here when you’re not coming at me with your fists.” Shake’s eyes drop and Gaku follows his gaze to his own bruised knuckles, blues and purple spattered lightly across his skin like faded spilled paint, a hallmark of how he spends most of his days.

“I guess.” He doesn’t know what to say, but something in him wants to answer just the same. Something in him wants to speak even when he has nothing to add to the conversation.

Shake’s lips twitch at the corners, a phantom of a smile. “Not that I don’t enjoy fighting with you. You’re… Different from the others. You have more spirit than the rest of them do.”

“I’m better than they are,” Gaku insists. He  _ is _ better, and everyone should know that.

“Ah, you do think that, don’t you? I suppose, in a way, you do have better attributes.” Shake’s smile is more noticeable this time, but also patronizing and Gaku scowls at him. “I like fighting you more, if I’m being honest. You don’t last as long as Marumo does, but it’s more meaningful when it’s the two of us. That’s how I feel about things.”

Gaku blinks. The words… Sound like they mean something, but he can’t quite puzzle out the meaning of them, the intention in Shake’s softly spoken words. Is this the man who struck such fear into his heart when they encountered each other in the hallway? It seems less likely to be true than it should be, seems less like fact and more like childish nightmare, and yet Gaku knows the truth. He remembers his hand trembling, the fear coiling in the pit of his stomach to be so close to someone so strong, an untouchable gold standard.

Untouchable. The word irks him; he stretches out a hand, rests it on top of Shake’s own. “You talk a lot of flowery crap, you know that? Kirio would probably be really into it.”

“D-do I?” Shake stumbles and Gaku’s head jerks up, the sound registering perfectly to his ears.

He must be imagining things. The heat, maybe he isn’t quite as cognizant of his reaction to it as he thinks he is because he must be overheating. Or, perhaps, Shake is. He must get hot up here under the sun constantly, flirting with the edge of sun stroke; that would certainly explain the pink blooming in his cheeks but not the way his eyes glitter, not quite dangerously but something else. Something Gaku can’t quite explain.

Maybe he doesn’t want to know how to explain it.

“Yeah.” Gaku swallows around a strange tightness in his throat. “I guess that’s okay. You can say whatever you want if you can back it up, right?”

“You can.” Shake’s smile softens, something more sincere. “Do you know why I asked you up here? I wanted to talk to you in person. Did you expect that?”

Gaku sighs at him. “Do you have a reputation for talking? No. So of course I didn’t expect it.”

“I thought maybe I’d learn to hate the way you snark at people. You’re so disrespectful, even toward your senpai. Even toward the Top of your school.” Shake laughs, throws his head back; the sun streams down on his face and Gaku is struck dumb at the way the rays play across the lines of his face, the deep richness of his sun-kissed skin.

It takes a moment for the realization to settle in, slow and uncertain though it is. Gaku is aware of his hand, almost on fire now, still resting on top of Shake’s own, his fingers against the back of Shokichi’s hand, the skin there soft and warm to the touch. There’s something startlingly simple about this man, this man who fights with a skill and precision Gaku has never seen in another before, who keeps his place, who grinds everyone else into the dirt.

Simple, and yet beautiful. Gaku swallows hard, but his mouth is dry and his throat aches.

When Shake’s eyes meet his again, that sparkle is still present. “I  _ like _ you. Do you know how lonely it is at the top? I have my friends but no one else ever speaks to me except to fight me. I sometimes miss what it was like to be a first year at the bottom of the totem pole.”

“Are you saying I’m at the bottom?” Gaku demands, his voice jumping in volume.

“Are you? That’s up for you to decide, isn’t it?” Shake’s smile is self-indulgent. He shakes off Gaku’s hand, his own coming to rest on top of Gaku’s shoulders. “That’s what I like about you. That you make all the decisions for yourself. No hesitation, no forethought. No  _ fear. _ You’re impressive in a way no one else has ever been before.” He squeezes Gaku’s shoulders not hard enough to hurt but the gesture still sends Gaku reeling just the same.

“I know that,” he blurts out, and his face  _ burns. _ “I mean, like, uh, what I mean is—”

“You don’t have to explain. I get it. I get  _ you, _ I think.” Shake’s hands slip from his shoulders and Gaku misses the contact entirely. “I wanted to bring you up here to tell you that I appreciate you, and everything you’ve done for this school. You’ve livened it up and made it a little less boring to come here each day. You’ve made it  _ interesting _ for me again when it was boring for so long.”

Gaku frowns at him. “You’re conceited. It was always interesting. You’re just hard to please.”

“Mouthy, but I  _ like _ that about you.” Shake chuckles and shakes his head, and he bows it just slightly, and Gaku thinks he looks— Beautiful, again, with his shoulders hunched just a little, soft around the very farthest edges. “I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I like you, a lot. And I want to get to know you more than just as one of my most frequent challengers.”

Gaku’s brain short circuits. Trying to keep up with Shake’s words has already been a challenge but now his brain simply overloads, too much information to process and not nearly enough power to do so. His jaw slackens, a confused little noise crawling up from the back of his throat. Before he can summon an appropriate response to such a brazen statement, the rooftop door bangs open, a familiar quartet of people striding out onto the rooftop.

Oh, good, Kirio! Maybe Kirio can explain some of this to him.

“Interrupted. I see.” Shake sighs and stands, turning around to face Gaku’s friends. “Can I help you with something? Are we challenging early this morning?”

“You had Shiba brought up here and you didn’t think we were going to come investigate?” Marumo Taiji is indignant, as Gaku would expect him to be. “What are you even— Shiba, why are you sitting in Shake’s chair?”

Kirio makes a little  _ hoo _ noise, tugging at the loose sleeve of his floral button-down of choice for the day. “Well, well. I think we might have stumbled onto a private conversation.”

“Private.” Urabe Osamu frowns, not quite willing to pull his chin out of the zippered up collar of his jacket. “What private conversation would they need to be having?”

Mukai Shiro quickly responds. “I see now. We should go and give them some space.”

“I want to know what’s going on.” Taiji crosses the rooftop in quick steps, side-stepping Shake— by quite a margin at that, not that Gaku blames him— and pulls Gaku up to his feet by the arm. “You okay? I heard one of his friends dragged you out of class.”

Gaku blinks up at him, not sure what to say. “Me? I’m… Fine. We were just talking.”

“Talking,” Osamu echoes, brows furrowing.

“Talking,” Shiro repeats, raising his voice just enough that Taiji’s head swivels in his direction. “Not fighting, nothing. Just talking. We should go and give them some space. They clearly need it.”

“What do they need space for?” Osamu demands.

Kirio takes the opportunity to press his hands against Osamu’s cheeks; Gaku can hear his startled little squeak even from here, see the slight flush creeping from beneath Kirio’s slender fingers. “I’ll explain it all to you in due time. But I agree. We should leave them alone.”

“Wait, Kirio!” Gaku calls out. “I need to talk to you about—”

“I don’t doubt it. But now’s not the time! Timing is key, and we’re ruining the mood.” Kirio beckons Taiji with a single finger. “See, he’s fine. Just like I told you he would be.”

Shiro scoffs. “You still ran up here to the rescue, didn’t you?”

“ _ Just _ like I said he  _ would be, _ ” Kirio reiterates, Gaku blinking at him, feeling more and more confused by the moment. “Shiba, later. I promise. Marumo, let’s  _ go. _ ”

Taiji still hesitates; concerned brown eyes meet Gaku’s, his fingers pressing into Gaku’s arm through the sleeve of his shirt. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay if I leave you up here with him? This is abnormal behavior even for him and you should know that.”

The fact everyone is so willing to talk about Shake like he isn’t standing here watching them all has to be grating on him; it annoys Gaku quite a bit, but he couches the offense for Shake’s sake, gently setting his hand on top of Taiji’s. “I’m fine. Now just go with the others.”

Kirio shepherds everyone off of the rooftop and closes the door behind himself; Gaku slumps back into the chair, exhausted from the encounter and the difficult turmoil of his own feelings, the confusion surrounding Shake’s words to him. Get to know him as more than a challenger? Shake has  _ friends, _ certainly he isn’t looking for more, and not in a first year determined to knock him from his throne once and for all. Maybe his words have a meaning Gaku doesn’t understand; he seems so mysterious and aloof, after all.

Shake sits back down on the table, looking fatigued in his own way, elbows coming to rest on his knees. “That was not supposed to happen. I told the others not to let it.”

“It’s not a big deal.” Gaku doesn’t want anyone talking about his friends. “You were saying—”

Shake’s eyes burn into him once more. “I was. That I wanted to get to know you better.”

“Yeah, like, in what way?” Gaku spreads his hands out, not sure what else to say. “Like, as a friend? It seems weird you’d want to be friends seeing as you’re older than me. As a—”

When Shake moves, he moves quick, as fluid as a large cat, suddenly off of the table, closing the distance between them until he deposits himself in Gaku’s lap, startling a choked noise of disbelief out of Gaku’s throat. His brain hardly has a chance to catch up with this—  _ tall, handsome, beautiful, dangerous, deadly, perfect man sitting in lap _ — when Shake leans closer to him, the space rapidly decreasing between them until there’s nothing left at all.

Every part of him is hard, is angled. Except for his lips, soft as a kitten’s fur, warm against Gaku’s own, barely touching his like Shake expects him to fight his way out of the kiss. Gaku sits prone for a moment, his eyes still open— not the way to kiss, not at all— but he can see Shake like this, short of. Can see his beautiful bronzed skin and the fact his eyes are closed, his expression so soft and yet passionate that Gaku doesn’t know what to do with this information.

His brain overloads. Steam might be pouring from his ears at this point.

The signals are all wrong. Gaku thinks  _ kiss _ and he wants to be suave, once to kiss back smooth and slow and easy and instead the connection between brain and body is so fried he reads everything wrong and instead throws his arms around Shake, lips moving against his gracelessly and frantically, fueled only by sudden desire and excitement and exactly zero true experience to draw on. Shake makes a startled noise against his lips and Gaku hugs him all the tighter, all tongue and lips and no idea what he’s going for.

When he finally needs to come up for hair, he’s panting like a dog left in the heat for too long, his face burning, his lips a little sore and his brain fuzzy static around the edges. Shake’s face is pink all the way through now, a lovely undertone against his skin, and his lips are swollen and a little wet and Gaku thinks he could die happy right about now.

“What the hell was that?” Shake asks him, and he sounds a little dazed, and Gaku is so stupid, so  _ stupid _ that he grins like an idiot at the sound.

“I guess—” He breaks off, gulping in oxygen like he’s dying. “I guess I wanna get to know you better, too.”

Shake blinks at him, wide dark eyes before he laughs and leans in again, and this time Gaku lets him lead the kiss, and tries to follow his ministrations, hands slipping beneath the white of his cardigan, slipping over the material of his binder instead, closer to skin. Yeah, he might want to get to know Shake a little better after all.


End file.
